Bonfire Night: 10 stunning fireworks displays and disasters from around the world

Families across Britain are getting ready to attend fireworks displays to
celebrate Bonfire Night on November 5. Here are 10 of the most dramatic
fireworks clips on the web.

1. An apocalyptic explosion that seems to have originated at ground level, sending flares in all directions. Sadly, the YouTube blurb does not reveal where it was filmed.

2. The annual display in the Taiwanese town of Yenshui, or Yanshui, is the stuff of legend. Spectators are encouraged to wear helmets and protective jackets because the thousands of rockets fired from each "bee hive" launcher have a habit of veering off into the crowd. The festival commemorates the end of a cholera epidemic that nearly wiped out the town in the 19th Century.

3. Apparently the done thing in Mexico is to strap fireworks to hammers and smash them into the ground. But this cocky teenager bit off a little more than he could chew.

4. How do you replicate the splendor of a night-time fireworks display in daylight? 1) Use a 36 in shell, one of the largest ever detonated. 2) Make it colourful.

5. The Eiffel Tower was rigged with pyrotechnics this summer to mark its 120th anniversary, and 220 years since the French Revolution. Rockets appeard to circle the structure like ribs, before a frenzied finale in which the tower was enveloped by flames.

6. Two "displays" that should never have taken place. First, eyewitness footage of a blast at a fireworks factory in the Dutch city of Enschede in 2000 that left 22 people dead. And, below that, a clip of a similar tragedy four years later at a factory in Seest, Denmark.

7. Military aircraft are not designed to be beautiful, but there is a wonderful serenity in this footage of a jet firing out decoy flares.

8. Blameless Lego people blown to smithereens by tiny fireworks. The rolling blasts that destroy the little Lego house at 2.30 are particularly well done.

9. The Fourth of July fireworks in New York are always sensational, but this year the residents of New Jersey had a particularly dazzling show as the display was moved to the Hudson River, from its usual location over the East River. A amateur filmmaker captured the spectacle.

10. The intensity of this Japanese display is best summed up by one of the Youtube commenters: "What were they trying to do, make a second sun?"